Society in Scotland for
Propagating Christian Knowledge

Variant name:

The Scotch Society

Address:

Edinburgh, Scotland

Description:

The Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge (SSPCK) is
a Presbyterian missionary society formed in 1709 and still active today.
The SSPCK was founded to anglicize the Scottish Highlands, which at the
time were predominantly Gaelic and had little in common with lowland
Scotland. British Protestants identified many of the same “problems” in
Gaelic and Native American society, and in 1730, the SSPCK expanded into
the colonies via a board of correspondents in Boston. Although most of
Wheelock’s contact with the SSPCK took place through its Boston, New
Jersey/New York, and Connecticut boards, he did work directly with the
SSPCK parent organization during Occom’s fundraising tour of Great
Britain (1765-1768). Since Occom was technically sent to England by the
Connecticut Board of the SSPCK, it was only natural that his tour
include a visit to the parent organization in Edinburgh. The SSPCK,
headed by the Marquis of Lothian, issued a bulletin to its member
churches which allowed Whitaker and Occom to collect a substantial sum
of money with little time or travel. While most of the money that Occom
raised went into a trust under the Earl of Dartmouth (the English
Trust), the money he raised in Scotland (approximately £2,500) went into
an SSPCK-controlled fund that ultimately proved difficult to access.
While the English Trust essentially gave Wheelock a blank check for the
money it controlled (much of which went toward clearing land and
erecting buildings for Dartmouth College), the SSPCK was much more
stringent about requiring that the money Occom had raised be applied
only to Native American education. As was often the case in the
18th-century British-Atlantic world, religious politics were a powerful
motivator. Wheelock and the SSPCK both practiced Reformed Protestant
Christianity, but New Hampshire was an Episcopalian colony. To make
Wheelock’s Reformed Protestantism more palatable to Episcopalian New
Hampshire, the New Hampshire governor attempted to make the Anglican
Bishop of London a member of the English Trust and possibly the
Dartmouth Trustees (the Bishop of London seems to have never replied to
the invitation). Dartmouth’s geographic association with the
Episcopalian Church, in addition to concerns about the use of the fund,
gave the SSPCK an incentive to withhold money from Wheelock. It only
issued Wheelock £190 throughout his life, although it did provide
financial support to Samuel Kirkland out of the fund. It is worth noting
that Wheelock seems to have been well aware that he would have trouble
getting money from the SSPCK: he went through the entirety of the
English Trust’s fund before soliciting the SSPCK. Subsequent Dartmouth
presidents struggled to access the money, with limited success, until
1893. In 1922, the SSPCK concluded that since Moor’s Indian Charity
School had become defunct, it was within its rights to devote the
remainder of the fund—then valued at £10,000—to other missionary
operations.

Calloway, Colin. White People, Indians, and Highlanders
: Tribal People and Colonial Encounters in Scotland and America. Oxford
University Press 2008. McCallum, James. The Letters of Eleazar
Wheelock’s Indians. Dartmouth College Press 1932. Richardson, Leon. An
Indian Preacher in England. Hanover: Dartmouth College Press 1933.
Chase, Frederick. A history of Dartmouth College and the Town of
Hanover, New Hampshire. 1891.

General note:

See also the orgographies on the Boston, New York/New
Jersey, and Connecticut SSPCK boards.